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British Newspapers: Difference between revisions
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** ''The Observer'' - Sunday-only sister paper to ''The Guardian''. Basically the same, but even more smug. Also leans more towards the arts.
*** ''The Observer'' does have some reason to be smug - it is oldest Sunday newspaper in the entire world.
** The ''Guardian'' is also [[Rule of Three|increasingly notable]] for the nearly unfailing correlation of their recommendations about elections and the inverse outcome:
*** Told Americans not to vote for [[George W. Bush]]'s second term, and encouraged their readers to write Americans in the "swing" area of Clark County, Ohio to this effect, even if the American voters in question were complete strangers. It caused a major backlash from Americans that resulted in Clark County voting Republican; the ''Guardian'' wound up publishing some of the hate mail that they received under the headline [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/oct/18/uselections2004.usa2 "Dear Limey assholes"].
*** And Londoners not to vote for [[Boris Johnson]] as mayor.
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** A useful tip would be not to buy/read or [[Berserk Button|talk positively about ''The Sun'' around Liverpool]], due to a particularly disgusting article they [[Blatant Lies|fabricated out of whole cloth]] which accused Liverpool fans of attacking victims of the 1989 Hillsborough football stadium disaster. You'll find it difficult to do this anyway; most newsagents in Liverpool refuse to stock it and nobody will take it, even with a free DVD or magazine stuffed in to lure them to buy it, nor can they even give it away for free. Twenty-two years on and the ''Sun'''s circulation in the city has never even begun to recover. It was ''that'' offensive.
*** At one point the ''Sun'''s editor apologized, but later after he'd left the paper he recanted, said he'd been pressured into the apology by Rupert Murdoch, and stood by the original story.
**** In Liverpool it's not just not carried by newsagents, it's actively campaigned against, even 22 years later. Even Everton supporters overcome their hatred of Liverpool FC and avoid buying The Sun.
** [[Roma]] or [[Irish Travellers]] won't thank you for doing so either, what with their "Stamp On The Camp" campaign that was trying to have both communities reclassified as some sort of vermin infestation or something. Nor has their treatment of refugees, women, Muslims or... *sigh* Just don't admit to liking it around anyone who isn't a white, heterosexual working-class male under the age of forty, alright?
*** And over twenty-five; anything below and you're a hoody, a vicious criminal or slacking off in school thanks to all the exam boards 'dumbing down'.
** All of the above make the arrests of the weekend of the 11-12 February 2012 and the subsequent internal blame game very easy to watch for all of the above offended groups.
** Former editor Kelvin McKenzie (the one responsible for the above-mentioned Hillsborough article) conveniently summed up the average ''Sun'' reader: "He's the [[British Pubs|bloke you see in the pub]], [[Godwin's Law|a right old fascist]], [[Politically-Incorrect Villain|wants to send the wogs back]], [[Council Estate|buy his poxy council house]], [[Red Scare|he's afraid of the unions]], [[Dirty Commies|afraid of the Russians]], [[Heteronormative Crusader|hates the queers and the weirdos]] and [[Drugs Are Bad|drug dealers]]. [[Viewers are Morons|He doesn't want to hear about that stuff (i.e. serious news)]]".
** The Sun now publishes an edition every day except Christmas Day.
* ''The Mirror'' - A generally left-wing tabloid (though as a populist paper it can veer right on issues like crime), supporting Labour doggedly but opposing the Iraq War. Ironically founded as a Conservative stable-mate of the ''Daily Mail'' (to the extent of supporting Oswald Mosley), but new ownership in the '30s turned it to its present left-of-centre ideology. Had one editor (Piers Morgan) [http://web.archive.org/web/20041012123314/ sacked over faked pictures of abuse in Iraq], then few months later ran the "Bush states have lower IQs" hoax as genuine. Has been in decline a long period of time. Also known as the "Daily Moron", after Piers Morgan - [[Insistent Terminology|always named]] some variant on Piers Moron by ''[[Private Eye]]''.
** Other notable gaffes involved [[Fawlty Towers|"mentioning the war"]] before England's Euro 96 semi-final against Germany. Then again, that's standard operating procedure in the gutter press whenever England play Germany. Nonetheless, on this occasion the Mirror contrived to go unusually far even by those standards, going off on an extended riff about "Declaring Football War" on Germany.
** It also has an odd history of enmity with [[Private Eye]], due to both an owner, [[Corrupt Corporate Executive|Robert Maxwell]], and later the aforementioned editor Piers Morgan, having a special hatred for the magazine and no compunction against devoting all the resources they possessed to this 'battle'.
*** Maxwell sued [[Private Eye]] for £225,000 (a fortune then, and an even bigger fortune now) and won it. [[Private Eye]] editor Ian Hislop famously said: [[Deadpan Snarker|"I've just given a fat cheque to a fat Czech."]] (Maxwell was born in Czechoslovakia).
** In more recent years the Mirror has been targeting a primarily female audience, to the point where generally about half of the stories and articles are aimed specifically at women, with the remainder (barring the sports pages) being gender-neutral. The exception to this is the Saturday and Monday editions; since so much of the paper is dedicated to [[The Beautiful Game|football]] on those days anyway, the editorial team usually uses them for any male-specific content they want to publish.
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* ''The Irish News'': Published in Belfast and available across Ireland, though it is only a major player in the North. A moderate Nationalist compact.
* ''The News Letter'': Ancient Belfast based tabloid, published since 1737, making it the longest surviving English language daily in the world. Staunchly Unionist in politics (though apparently it was once Republican in its distant past).
* Additionally most of the English papers sell specific Irish editions in the Republic. These range from near-identical to the English versions (''The Irish Sun'') to substantially different (''The Irish Daily Star'', which superficially resembles its London equivalent but with far less interest in celebrities and a surprisingly strong Irish political view). ''The Daily Mail'' (of all papers) has fairly recently started producing an Irish edition and is trying to find its footing and understand its audience - ironically Lord Northcliffe, the founder of the paper was himself originally from Dublin.
* ''[http://www.impartialreporter.com/ The Impartial Reporter]'', based mainly around Fermanagh and Enniskillen. Tries to stay out of politics, and a brief look at [[The Troubles|Northern Irish politics]] will tell you why and give you the reason for the name.
** Ironically, ''The Impartial Reporter'' is viewed in some circles as the local Protestant/Unionist newspaper; a second newspaper in the area, ''The Fermanagh Herald'', is more geared towards Catholic/Nationalist readers. This duopoly in local press according to where you stand on [[The Irish Question]] is mirrored in other cities and towns in Northern Ireland; its second-largest city has weekly papers ''The Derry Journal'' and ''The Londonderry Sentinel'' - have a guess which community each paper targets!
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* ''Metro'' - Has multiple local editions. No real political views explicitly expressed in the paper (it doesn't have a comment section) but the writing is reminiscent of its sister paper, the ''Daily Mail''. Amusingly, [[Hilarity Ensues|once confused a Saudi Royal with an international terrorist.]]
** Most of it's content can be summed up as obsessing over [[The X Factor]], Cheryl Cole, Reality TV, Simon Cowell and anything with Pop Music in. Although it does print [[Nemi]] as well.
* ''thelondonpaper''. [[Page Three Stunna|Frequently sticks a picture of a scantily-clad woman in its "pictures of the day" section on page 2]]. It was owned by [[Rupert Murdoch]], go figure. Although unlike Murdoch's other papers, it was strongly socially liberal, with male and female regular gay columnists. Now defunct.
* ''London Lite''. Associated Newspapers owned (and previously a lite version of the ''Standard''), now defunct.
* ''City AM''. A business paper, with a supplement on sports betting.
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=== Notes ===
Many of these papers have Sunday editions, some of which are quite different (especially ''The Observer'', which is considerably more moderate than ''The Guardian'', & the ''Mail On Sunday'', which is held to be a bit more credible than its daily counterpart). These papers often have a [[Sunday Leaked Document]]. There are also Sunday only papers, as mentioned earlier, not to mention numerous daily regional papers around the country from the ''Western Mail'' (Wales) to the ''Eastern Daily Press''. Most places in the UK also have at least one local newspaper, where newspaper journalists traditionally start (and in most cases end) their careers. These are generally published weekly, often on a Friday, although it can be on any day. These papers generally (or at least stereotypically) deal with mind-numbingly parochial topics such as road repairs, coffee mornings, local council affairs, etc. Perhaps best summed up with Linda Smith's favourite newspaper headline, "Worksop Man Dies Of Natural Causes". The ''Rochdale Observer'' (a typical example, best-known outside the titular town for being name-checked in ''[[Waterloo Road]]'') once ran a front page story about a ''food fight'', describing a chicken leg "arcing gracefully through the air" and featuring two interviewees arguing about the airspeed velocity of a Black Forest gateau. One said it was doing 10 mph and the other said 25.
* [[Monty Python and
** [[Ba Dum Tish]]
* On the day every other paper reported the assassination of JFK, a local paper's banner headline was "Edlington Man Has Ferret Stolen From Back Garden".
* The ''Dundee Courier'' (from the makers of the ''Sunday Post''); when news of the Titanic sinking reached it, its main headline was "Dundee Man Arrested". The Titanic story was a few pages in.
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